Interesting.
The moment when @realDonaldTrump said his former White House Counsel Don McGahn lied under oath to make himself look like a better lawyer. pic.twitter.com/pd5Ad6tyZJ
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) June 14, 2019
He did say that. Stephanopoulos asked why McGahn would lie under oath to Robert Mueller, Trump said “To make himself look like a better lawyer.” He also told Stephanopoulos “You’re being a little wise guy.”
https://twitter.com/Susan_Hennessey/status/1139547165968261121
EXCLUSIVE: Pres. Trump reacts to Kamala Harris' statement that she'd "have no choice" but to pursue criminal charges against him if elected.
"Probably, if I were running in her position, I'd make the same statement,” he tells @GStephanopoulos. https://t.co/Fui41naEyd pic.twitter.com/bgVJ1AILH1
— ABC News (@ABC) June 13, 2019
Hey George, I know more about prosecutors than you’ll ever know.
The reason for Trump’s sudden new panic about Flynn, and his deranged threats to imprison Obama and Sally Yates and anyone else who warned him about Flynn while he didn’t listen, is even more startling than the panic and threats. It’s because a federal judge ruled yesterday that that part of the Mueller report must be made public.
A federal judge on Thursday ordered that prosecutors make public a transcript of a phone call that former national security adviser Michael Flynn tried hard to hide with a lie: his conversation with a Russian ambassador in late 2016.
U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in Washington ordered the government also to provide a public transcript of a November 2017 voice mail involving Flynn. In that sensitive call, President Trump’s attorney left a message for Flynn’s attorney reminding him of the president’s fondness for Flynn at a time when Flynn was considering cooperating with federal investigators. . . . Sullivan also ordered that still-redacted portions of the Mueller report that relate to Flynn be given to the court and made public.
Uh oh. “Reminding him of the president’s fondness for Flynn” – that’s witness tampering.
The voice mail was from John Dowd, President Trump’s former personal lawyer who, according to The Post, “tried to learn whether Flynn had any problematic information about the president after Flynn’s attorney signaled his client might begin cooperating with Mueller’s investigators.”
The kicker: “In one of the previously redacted filings released Thursday, prosecutors said Flynn described multiple episodes in which ‘he or his attorneys received communications from persons connected to the Administration or Congress that could have affected both his willingness to cooperate and the completeness of that cooperation.’ ”
This may be the most significant revelation since we learned of the president’s efforts to fire special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Even Attorney General William P. Barr conceded in his infamous memo to the Justice Department, “Obviously, the President and any other official can commit obstruction in this classic sense of sabotaging a proceeding’s truth-finding function. Thus, for example, if a President knowingly destroys or alters evidence, suborns perjury, or induces a witness to change testimony, or commits any act deliberately impairing the integrity or availability of evidence, then he, like anyone else, commits the crime of obstruction.” Barr also told Senate Judiciary Committee members during his confirmation hearing that it would be illegal for a president to coach a witness or persuade a witness to change testimony.
The disclosure, of course, raises serious questions as to why Barr redacted this material in the report, and why evidence that Trump did precisely what Barr said was illegal did not convince him that the president had obstructed justice.
Good god. These people.
Even if we are not talking about criminal liability, the episode points to Trump’s unfitness for office. Former prosecutor Joyce White Vance tells me, “Knowing that the President’s lawyers sought to discourage Flynn from cooperating with prosecutors underscores how fundamentally flawed this presidency is. Mob bosses try to keep their associates from helping law enforcement uncover crimes, not presidents.”
But if you make a guy who has always operated like a mob boss president, then you get a mob boss president. And here we are.
Everything is subject to “executive privilege.” Everything. Nobody can give anything to any Congressional hearing ever because “executive privilege.” It’s an eternal law and it covers everything in this universe and all others.
The White House on Tuesday invoked executive privilege to bar former White House counsel Donald McGahn from complying with a congressional subpoena to provide documents to Congress related to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation.
In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, White House counsel Pat A. Cipollone said McGahn does not have the legal right to comply with its subpoena for 36 types of documents — most relating to Mueller’s nearly two-year probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Rather, Cipollone argued the committee needed to send the request to the White House — and even hinted that they would assert privilege to block the information.
Because executive privilege is an absolute, and not subject to the whims of such a trivial body as the legislative branch.
McGahn emerged as a central player in Mueller’s findings, a senior confidante who documented in real-time Trump’s rage against the Russia investigation and efforts to shut it down. Democrats were hoping to have him testify for a national television audience.
The special counsel has identified two episodes in which McGahn was a critical witness and in which investigators say they have substantial evidence Trump was engaged in obstruction of justice that would normally warrant criminal charges.
In mid-June of 2017, Trump tried to pressure McGahn to intervene with the Justice Department to try to push for Mueller’s removal from office based on alleged conflicts of interest, the report said; in February 2018, Trump summoned McGahn to the Oval Office and urged him to deny a news account that suggested the president asked for his help in ousting Mueller.
But Trump is His Majesty King Executive, so none of that matters. God save the King Executive.
Trump tried to get Sessions to Lock Her Up.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions had a tenuous hold on his job when President Trump called him at home in the middle of 2017. The president had already blamed him for recusing himself from investigations related to the 2016 election, sought his resignation and belittled him in private and on Twitter.
Now, Mr. Trump had another demand: He wanted Mr. Sessions to reverse his recusal and order the prosecution of Hillary Clinton.
…
Mr. Mueller’s report released last week brimmed with examples of Mr. Trump seeking to protect himself from the investigation. But his request of Mr. Sessions — and two similar ones detailed in the report — stands apart because it shows Mr. Trump trying to wield the power of law enforcement to target a political rival, a step that no president since Richard M. Nixon is known to have taken.
Remember when he threatened that in one of the debates? And how much shock-horror there was?
Mr. Trump wanted Mrs. Clinton investigated for her use of a private email server to conduct government business while secretary of state, the report said, even though investigators had examined her conduct and declined to bring charges in a case closed in 2016.
And even though Trump’s own Princess Ivanka was using a private server to conduct government business while daughter of president with job as senior adviser.
By trying to have Mrs. Clinton prosecuted, Mr. Trump was following through on a campaign promise. At rallies, he often stood on stage denouncing her as crowds chanted, “Lock her up!”
“This reeks of a typical practice in authoritarian regimes where whoever attains power, they don’t just take over power peacefully, but they punish and jail their opponents,” said Matthew Dallek, a political historian and professor at George Washington University.
…
Beyond Mr. Mueller’s report, there is evidence that Mr. Trump has continued to try to push the Justice Department to bend to his wishes. He told the White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II in April 2018 that he wanted the Justice Department to prosecute Mrs. Clinton and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, two people familiar with the conversation have said.
…
It was unclear from the report whether Mr. Trump appreciated the difference between using his power to target Mrs. Clinton and trying to insulate himself from law enforcement scrutiny, Mr. Buell noted. It is more likely, he said, that Mr. Trump simply viewed the Justice Department and the F.B.I. as institutions that worked for him.
“All of his demands fit into a picture that he believes the apparatus is mine,” Mr. Buell said.
Mr. Trump has kept up the public lashings of law enforcement officials and Mrs. Clinton. “There are no Crimes by me at all,” he wrote on Twitter on Wednesday. “All of the Crimes were committed by Crooked Hillary, the Dems, the DNC and Dirty Cops — and we caught them in the act!”
“I’m not the mob boss, they’re the mob boss!!”
Trump today.
Happy Easter! I have never been happier or more content because your Country is doing so well, with an Economy that is the talk of the World and may be stronger than it has ever been before. Have a great day!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 21, 2019
Never happier or more content? Really? Then why all the tantruming?
Friday it was one tantrum after another.
President Donald Trump lashed out Friday at current and former aides who cooperated with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, insisting the deeply unflattering picture they painted of him and the White House was “total bullshit.”
In a series of angry tweets from rainy Palm Beach, Florida, Trump laced into those who, under oath, had shared with Mueller their accounts of how Trump tried numerous times to squash or influence the investigation and portrayed the White House as infected by a culture of lies, deceit and deception.
…
The attacks were a dramatic departure from the upbeat public face the White House had put on it just 24 hours earlier, when Trump celebrated the report’s findings as full exoneration and his counselor Kellyanne Conway called it “the best day” for Trump’s team since his election. While the president, according to people close to him, did feel vindicated by the report, he also felt betrayed by those who had painted him in an unflattering light — even though they were speaking under oath and had been directed by the White House to cooperate fully with Mueller’s team.
Yes but by “cooperate” they didn’t mean tell the truth. Jesus. Do they have to spell out everything? So it’s a felony to lie to federal investigators, tough shit, that’s part of the job.
While Mueller found no criminal evidence that Trump or his campaign aides colluded in Russian election meddling and did not recommend obstruction charges against the president, the 448-page report released Thursday nonetheless paints a damaging picture of the president, describing numerous cases where he discouraged witnesses from cooperating with prosecutors and prodded aides to mislead the public on his behalf to hamper the Russia probe he feared would cripple his presidency.
But he’s never been happier or more content. I guess one could read that in a very literal way, to mean that this miserable is his normal state.
Informational interlude: tell us more about Trump’s favorite lawyer, Roy Cohn:
https://twitter.com/JoshuaMZeitz/status/1119191363290116096
President Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort is pleading guilty Friday to two criminal charges under terms of a plea deal that includes his cooperation as a potential witness for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.
The decision by Manafort to provide evidence in exchange for leniency on sentencing is a stunning development in the long-running probe into whether any Trump associates may have conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election.
Manafort’s defenders have long insisted that he would not cooperate with Mueller, and didn’t know any incriminating information against the president.
It’s ok though, what he’s pleading guilty to is minor:
A criminal information — a legal document filed by prosecutors to detail the criminal conduct to be admitted by the defendant — was filed in advance of the plea. The document shows Manafort intends to plead guilty to two crimes of the seven he faced at trial: conspiring to defraud the United States and conspiring to obstruct justice.
Not so minor then.
The document indicates he will admit to funneling millions of dollars in payments into offshore accounts to conceal his income from the Internal Revenue Service. “Manafort cheated the United States out of over $15 million in taxes,” the document states.
MAGA.
The filing also offers new details about the various ways in which Manafort sought to surreptitiously lobby the U.S. government and influence American public opinion toward Ukraine.
In 2012, Manafort set out to help his client, Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, by tarnishing the reputation of Yanukovych’s political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, according to the document.
Tarnishing Tymoshenko’s reputation with lies – which is what these pieces of crap do.
“Manafort stated that ‘[m]y goal is to plant some stink on Tymo’,” according to the document. At the time he made that statement, he was trying to get U.S. news outlets to print stories that Tymoshenko had paid for the murder of a Ukrainian official, according to the criminal information.
The document also says Manafort “orchestrated a scheme to have, as he wrote in a contemporaneous communication, ‘[O]bama jews’ put pressure on the administration to disavow Tymoshenko and support Yanukovych,” the document said.
Manafort set out to spread stories in the U.S. that a senior American Cabinet official “was supporting anti-Semitism because the official supported Tymoshenko,” according to the document. “At one point, Manafort wrote to an associate, “I have someone pushing it on the NY Post. Bada bing bada boom.”
That is literal Fake News.
Manafort’s mobster buddies are going to be disappointed in him.
Earlier this year, Manafort derided Gates, his former business partner, for striking a deal with prosecutors that provided him leniency in exchange for testimony against his former partner.
“I had hoped and expected my business colleague would have had the strength to continue the battle to prove our innocence,” Manafort said in February.
Kevin M. Downing, an attorney for Manafort, also said this summer that there was “no chance” his client would flip and cooperate with prosecutors.
That posture drew plaudits from Trump, who praised his former campaign chairman for his unwillingness to cooperate with the special counsel.
Prosecutors “applied tremendous pressure on him and . . . he refused to ‘break’ – make up stories in order to get a ‘deal,’ ” the president tweeted last month. “Such respect for a brave man!”
Yeah, such respect for a brave man who peddled lies about Yulia Tymoshenko and defrauded the US government of 15 million dollars.
Jonathan Chait on Dana Loesch on Trump as The Martyr Al Capone:
NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch informs her audience that the FBI is trying to pull the same tricks on Trump that they used to entrap the beloved Prohibition-era Chicago gang leader:
They’re trying to Al Capone the president. I mean, you remember. Capone didn’t go down for murder. Elliot Ness didn’t put him in for murder. He went in for tax fraud. Prosecutors didn’t care how he went down as long as he went down.
You might wonder why Trump’s supporters believe his legal defense is aided by analogizing him to a murderous criminal. Perhaps the answer is that Capone had several qualities that recommend him to the Republican grassroots base. He was a business owner — or, in modern Republican lingo, a Job Creator. He was an avid Second Amendment enthusiast. And, most importantly, Capone, like Trump, was a victim of the deep state.
Or perhaps the answer is that they are Trump supporters so why would they not also be fans of Al Capone? Being a Trump supporter at this point entails being a fan of a greedy bullying ruthless criminal, so why not Capone right along with Trump? It’s not as if Capone is worse than Trump, so why not? Trump hates da Feds and so did Capone so what more do they need?
The mob boss thing has not gone unnoticed. Jonathan Chait’s piece on it in New York magazine for instance, subtly titled “Trump Wants to Ban Flipping Because He Is Almost Literally a Mob Boss”:
The way a roll-up of the Gambino family, or any other crime organization, would work is that the FBI would first find evidence of crimes against lower-level figures, and then threaten them with lengthy prison sentences unless they provide evidence against higher-ranking figures in the organization. The roll-up moves from bottom to top. It would be extremely difficult to prosecute any organized crime if it were not possible to trade lenient sentences in return for cooperation.
In an interview with Fox News, President Trump offers his view that flipping is dishonorable, and is so unfair it “almost ought to be outlawed.”
It’s bitterly amusing to see Trump talking about “fairness” when it’s hard to imagine anyone more indifferent to fairness in general than greedy piggy mob boss Donnie Two-scoops.
Trump has also made clear, in tweets over the weekend, that he is not only opposed to false testimony. He opposes flipping on the boss as a matter of principle. Here he is over the weekend denouncing President Nixon’s lawyer John Dean as a “rat.”
The failing @nytimes wrote a Fake piece today implying that because White House Councel Don McGahn was giving hours of testimony to the Special Councel, he must be a John Dean type “RAT.” But I allowed him and all others to testify – I didn’t have to. I have nothing to hide……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2018
Dean famously testified about Nixon’s obstruction of justice. Nobody claims Dean lied about Nixon. The sin in Trump’s eyes is that he flipped, violating the omerta. Trump even uses Mafia lingo, “rat,” to describe Dean’s cooperation with law enforcement. To gangsters, a rat is considered the worst kind of person because they pose the greatest danger to their ability to escape prosecution.
It is obviously quite rare to hear a high-ranking elected official openly embrace the terminology and moral logic of La Cosa Nostra. But Trump is not just a guy who has seen a lot of mob movies. He has worked closely with Mafia figures throughout his business career.
That’s the president of the US he’s talking about.
Like a mobster, Trump takes an extremely cynical view of almost every moral principle in public life, assuming that everybody in politics is corrupt and hypocritical. (Hence his defense of Vladimir Putin’s murdering journalists: “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?”) He also follows mafia practice of surrounding himself with associates chosen on the basis of loyalty rather than traditional qualifications. Since the greatest threat to a mafia don’s business is that subordinates will betray him, he typically surrounds himself with family members, even if they are not the smartest or best criminals.
Ok so now I’m imagining a scenario in which Don Junior gets immunity, aka flips.
Allen Weisselberg, longtime chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, has been granted immunity by federal prosecutors as part of their investigation into President Donald Trump‘s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, NBC News reported Friday, citing multiple people with knowledge of the matter.
Cohen admitted on Tuesday that he had facilitated unlawful payments to two women at Trump’s direction in order to keep unfavorable information about the president, who at the time was still a candidate, from becoming public. In a legal document related to the case, Weisselberg, who is referred to as “Executive-1,” is accused of instructing a Trump Organization employee to reimburse Cohen for one of the payments.
So that should be interesting.
Oh god look at this cheap crook in action. Seeing it written down is bad enough but watching him saying it with his filthy lips is orders of magnitude more disgusting. This sleazy little hoodlum is the president of the US.
Trump: I know all about flipping. It should almost be illegal. pic.twitter.com/jCZhwN7XxP
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) August 23, 2018
More on Trump as mob boss:
Today, the president is testing the limits of his supporters’ moral flexibility yet again. Simply put, he has never sounded more like a mafioso than he did in an interview with Fox News on Thursday, reacting to a question about why Michael Cohen had turned on him:
Because he makes a better deal when he uses me, like everybody else. And one of the reasons I respect Paul Manafort so much is he went through that trial, you know they make up stories, people make up stories. This whole thing about “flipping,” they call it. I know all about flipping, for 30, 40 years I’ve been watching flippers. Everything is wonderful, and then they get 10 years in jail and they flip on whoever the next highest one is or as high as you can go. It almost ought to be outlawed. It’s not fair. …
If somebody defrauded a bank and he is going to get 10 years in jail or 20 years in jail but if you can say something bad about Donald Trump and you will go down to two years or three years, which is the deal [Cohen] made, in all fairness to him, most people are going to do that. And I’ve seen it many times, I’ve had many friends involved in this stuff, it’s called “flipping” and it almost ought to be illegal.
All the outrageous and appalling things you’ve heard Trump say shouldn’t keep you from being shocked at this. First, note that Trump says, “I’ve had many friends involved in this stuff” — “this stuff” meaning being accused of a crime and being offered leniency in exchange for cooperating with law enforcement to help them secure convictions on more significant criminals. I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t have many friends involved in that stuff, because I haven’t spent “30, 40 years” associating with apparent criminals.
And then there’s the part where he says it’s not fair, it ought to be illegal – using plea deals to prosecute other criminals. The president of the US is saying that oughta be illegal. He’s adopting, without apparently even noticing, the point of view of the criminal.
But Trump is big on people keeping their mouths shut. As head of the Trump Organization, as a candidate and as president, he has forced underlings to sign nondisclosure agreements forbidding them from revealing what saw while in his employ. In many cases, those agreements includednon-disparagement clauses in which the signer had to pledge never to criticize Trump or his family for as long as they lived. The mafia had “omerta,” and Trump has the NDA.
And that’s disgusting and shocking but it’s not surprising. Why not? Because this is who Trump is and that has always been obvious.
The thing about a cult of personality is that its character depends on the personality in question. Republicans sometimes mocked Democrats for worshiping Barack Obama, and you might argue that some of his supporters got a bit starry-eyed at times, particularly in 2008. But Obama never asked them to suddenly offer a full-throated defense of something morally abhorrent simply because the president thought it might be good for him.
The contrast could hardly be more stark.
I wouldn’t say the same about Bill Clinton. Jimmy Carter, yes, but Clinton, no. But Obama? Hell yes. He’s too conservative in some ways for my taste but as a human being…no comparison.